We're Coming Over on the Mayflower
but not the beer. The allowance of beer
used to be a gallon a day for the mariners.
Maybe it kept better than water in casks.
We'll have water and it won't be in casks.
We have built four good iron tanks into the
hold to have sufficient fresh water, but it
will have to be strictly rationed-none for
washing, except rain water.
Sails Sewn by Hand
Another problem was getting the sails, but
choice of the ancient fishing port of Brixham
took care of that one. Brixham men helped
Drake fight against the Armada, sailing up
Channel in 1588. The sailing tradition is not
wholly dead there yet, though it is years since
the last sailing fisherman left the port.
We found one last old-time sailmaker
who knew how to put a good belly on a
lateen mizzen, though he had never been
asked to do that in his life. He has sewn
a suit of sails for us by hand,
cut from best Scots flax canvas
specially woven for the ship by
Francis Webster & Sons, Ltd.,
of Arbroath, Scotland.
Webster's made the canvas
that we used in the big Cape
Horners; they know their busi
ness. They have been weaving
+ Ship's Tops Loom Against
the Sky as They Did
in the Days of Drake
Shored up with rough timbers,
Mayflower rests stern to sea in the
finishing dock. Her ornate beak
copies those used for ramming ene
mies in early sea battles. Circular
tops, here left unfinished to give rig
gers easy access, shielded musket men
and provided foot room for handling
topsails.
High Poop Suggests
+
a Skyscraper
This superstructure on the stern
houses quarters for captain and priv
ileged passengers and space for the
helmsman. As it rises it shows a
marked inward slope, known as tum
ble home.
Name, hailing port, and picture of
a May-blooming hawthorn flower
have yet to be painted on the stern.
Bands of tarred hemp, called "woold
ing" by the old-timers, are wrapped
around the masts to strengthen them.
B. Anthony Stewart, National Geographic
Photographer
canvas for sails for more than 200 years.
The very name "Webster" means weaver.
Research into the sailmaking and the
hempen rigging has involved a minute scru
tiny of innumerable old documents, as well
as the checking and cross-checking of infor
mation gleaned from old sailmakers and re
tired craftsmen, some over 80 years of age.
It is a good thing that the records were kept
and that the craftsmen have lived that long.
The Gourock Ropework Company in Port
Glasgow, Scotland, for instance, traced rec
ords to 1736, written in a fine, bold, and
legible hand on parchment, telling the secrets
of how to lay up cordage. Each of our ropes
must be not only historically correct but also
able to accept the stresses that a 17th-century
sailing ship, bouncing about in the great gray
swells of the North Atlantic, imposes on its
sails and rigging.
There are 350 separate ropes in the rigging
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